How many bits are in a byte?

How many bits are in a byte?

• A. 4
• B. 32
• C. 8
• D. 16

Answer: (C)

Bits are the smallest unit of information, representing 0 or 1. A byte is a practical data unit made up of several bits, and in modern computers a byte contains eight bits. With eight bits, you can represent 2^8, or 256, different values, which makes it a convenient size for storing a single character in many character sets and for common data values like color channel intensities. That’s why the standard unit of data size is an eight-bit byte. The other numbers correspond to different possible widths but are not the size of a byte.

Bits are the smallest unit of information, representing 0 or 1. A byte is a practical data unit made up of several bits, and in modern computers a byte contains eight bits. With eight bits, you can represent 2^8, or 256, different values, which makes it a convenient size for storing a single character in many character sets and for common data values like color channel intensities. That’s why the standard unit of data size is an eight-bit byte. The other numbers correspond to different possible widths but are not the size of a byte.